Two Years
by the queen of slurking
Summary: On the run, that's what this is called, only there's a surprising lack of running involved. (Alison spends two years running for her life)
1. Chapter 1

**I still don't own anything.**

 _Two Years_

She awakes in a motel room, her head hurting and the faintly musty scent of the room permeating the air.

The night's events return in bits and pieces… her mother burying her alive, the hit to the back of the head, Spencer and pills and blackmail and Ezra.

Mona looks at her through the mirror, indicates the piles of shopping bags and she's worried that Mona bought too much. Further inspection reveals two medium bags and some generic clothes, hair dye and a few basic cosmetics. The gratitude she feels is almost overwhelming, here is someone she can trust and she remembers a damp washcloth being brushed over her face.

And so she perches on the edge of the bathtub, her neck protected with a thin, worn-out towel as Mona applies the chemically-fruity dye. They don't speak, and her hair is pinned on top of her head while the dye works.

"Thank you," breaks the silence, and Mona gives a vague half-smile in response.

She stands in the shower while black water runs over her body and stains her fingernails and feels nothing like Alison DiLaurentis.

There's a car waiting out front of the lodge for her, and she carries out her meagre belongings and piles them in the passenger seat, adjusts the mirror. The car is shabby and not hers, and it's the first time she has ever gone somewhere with less than two suitcases of luggage. She has no idea where she's going, and so she presses the pedal down and steers away from Rosewood.

0o0o0o0

Three hours later she's made her way over somewhere near New York, or at least she thinks she has. Reflexively, she goes to check her phone, only to remember it's gone. Too useful as a tracking tool, Mona had said, so she'd crushed the SIM card beneath her high heel, ripped out the battery and battered the casing. She's technology-free, except for the car.

Instead, she reaches into the smaller of the two bags, rifles through with shaky hands. The cash is still there and she slowly counts out each note. It's a little over a thousand, and she doesn't want to know how Mona got hold of it.

The car is going to get low on gas, and then she'll have to top it up. It's too pricey, she can't use credit cards here or ring home for help.

Pulling the sleeve of her jacket over her hand, she opens the door and steps out with her bags, wipes the steering wheel as best she can, checks for anything that might incriminate her and walks off.

Thirty metres, forty, fifty… she walks and regrets not getting sustenance for the drive. Two hundred metres and she reaches a busier, more public area.

She sticks out her thumb.

0o0o0o0

 _On the run,_ that's what this is called. Only there's a surprising lack of running involved. She slips into another cheap and battered car, this one driven by a college girl and lies about everything. The girl is sweet and a bit nervous, clearly recognizing her as a popular type.

They stop for coffee and she takes the polystyrene cup, snags her things from the backseat and vanishes into a crowd.

She can't stop to look back, though she wants to pause and thank the girl for her help, give her advice like she'd given Mona advice, but if she falters then she won't be safe. It's better to be the one who disappears, better to be mystery girl than runaway girl.

The coffee burns her mouth, tastes bitter on her tongue but she drinks it slowly, tells herself it isn't so bad. It's a lie of course, but the basis in a lie is in believing it yourself, and so she repeats this little mantra every time she takes a sip. She doesn't know where the next one will come from, doesn't have the money to dole out on good coffees and for some reason she can't quite fathom, makes the coffee last. Maybe it'd be better to down it all, but then again she has to get used to drinking average drinks. There's not much space for designer food here – it's just the basics.

There's a bus station ahead and she hops on the next bus available, cringes internally at the fare that will take her a few cities away, and curls up in the universal don't-come-near way of bags beside her and an out-the-window gaze.

The cityscapes meld one into another, tall buildings and jungles of steel, concrete and windows.

She is free, but trapped: she is supposed to be dead, saw the horror on her mother's face when she was hit over the head with the rock and she knows she wasn't meant to survive.

0o0o0o0

Departing the bus is painless and vanishing into the crowds is made easy by the fact that the station is busy, families greeting each other and sending people off, lovers kissing and friends hugging. She is not the only one alone here though, there were a handful of loner nomads. She's fine – the dark wig makes her look older, the loner nomads mean she doesn't stand out because she's alone and so she pretends to be a travelling student. From her vantage point at the back of the bus, she saw every person boarding or disembarking, and by the time the journey is over she has several pages of her journal filled with character ideas and descriptions. Some were alone, and so she can be secure in the knowledge that solo travellers are not unusual to this city.

(Which city? She isn't sure, but there's a motel up the street)

Rooms are cheap, and she marvels silently at just how low the cost is. A few minutes later her elation turns to dismay: the room is grimy, as though it's seen a dozen conventions and never was cleaned properly. The bed squeaks when she puts her bag on it, and the desk chair has one leg slightly shorter than the others. The bathroom has a fine layer of dust and she's half-tempted to grab a towel and begin scrubbing, but none of that matters. It's a functional room, somewhere to stay for a few nights while she gets her bearings, and no-one said she had to sleep in the bed.

There's a small grocery store a few streets over, and she circles the aisles in confusion. The motel doesn't do room service, apparently, just provides a tiny kitchenette and space for her to cook. There are coffee packets and tea bags, sugar packets and that's the most of their domesticity.

 _Seems you get what you pay for,_ she muses as she picks up some crisps, a loaf of bread and some butter. This is bewildering territory for a girl who is used to finding food in the cupboards or straight from the fridge – at a stretch, she might have had to wait in a restaurant – but having to do her own food-shopping is completely new.

The clerk is sullen and does not make conversation through the transaction, scanning through each item and dumping it into a plastic bag. It doesn't surprise her though, already she is adapting to the silence of the city and the lack of friendliness it offers. Besides, lack of conversation with others is preferable – less opportunity to slip up and say something, less chance that someone will misinterpret her words.

Back in the motel she prepares a sandwich, takes a cookie from the bag and calls it dinner.

(God she misses home)

0o0o0o0

For a dead girl she manages to be active.

In cafes she drinks free tap water, flirts with cute boys (and the occasional girl because she's in no position to be fussy) and they buy her food. She picks salads and sandwiches and filled rolls, whatever she can get away with because it makes her own sad stash of food last longer and it's free.

Sometimes she makes token gestures to pay, gets as far as drawing her wallet from her bag before her companion waves her off, goes to the cash register. After the first few days she learns the trick of disappearing before they come back, returning to the motel triumphant in her success.

Soon she learns the value of walking further afield, places herself in a theatre or somewhere cheap to hang out. Some days she buys a book cheap from a thrift store, reads it in the park and before she knows it someone is asking her out for dinner. She gives fake addresses and masters buying dresses, leaving the tags on, and returning them for some made-up reason.

0o0o0o0

It becomes a cycle. Find a bus station, get the next bus out of the city and then spend a week coaxing free meals out of people.

She regrets nothing, because she didn't regret all the times she was a bitch to her friends and she can't bring herself to care for people now because they're just a means to an end. Just because she's fleeing for her life, doesn't mean she has to starve, and so she invests in a pair of reading glasses – the lenses are actually just plain glass, but they're convincing and with them she looks different enough that someone might do a double-take if they saw her.

At night she doesn't sleep, but stays up reading or watching TV on a crappy old monitor, sometimes falling into a light doze supplemented by caffeine. She hasn't truly rested in weeks now, has bags under her eyes and she's sure her face is thinner.

Turns out the temporary dye was too stubborn to fade out properly – she thinks about how long it took to fade off her thumb, where some had been splotched – and it'd just turned a kind of ashy gray over her hair, no thanks to the cheap generic hair care she's using. She takes a bottle of dye to her hair, permanent this time, and decides to let it grow out. Blonde, she is too recognizable, and she remembers seeing herself on a milk carton when she was stocking up on motel food.

(This is a far cry from what she had in mind when she imagined running to Paris with Emily)

She's brushing her hair for something to do when she tires of the black colour after two weeks: long enough that she stops doing a double-take, but it's boring. This is the part where she'd go to a salon, have the colour stripped and restored to her natural blonde, but she can't. Instead, she grits her teeth and drags the brush through again.

She can't take the risks – every time she sees a police officer, or any kind of law enforcer she's convinced that they recognize the girl hiding under the black hair. Sometimes, in the middle of an afternoon she's convinced that someone recognizes her, that someone will call her out and so she flees to another city.

Plays dead for a while and moves on.

It gets to the point where she carries a few pre-packaged foods in her bag, shrink-wrapped and likely to last until the apocalypse. It's the best way to carry food, dairy goods wouldn't survive multiple bus and train journeys.

0o0o0o0

The cities have begun to blur together. They all look the same, now she's used to being on the go.

There's always a town hall, always a museum named for the city and maybe an art gallery nearby. There are cafes all over the place, more bus stops than she cares to count and she makes it a priority to have someone else find out what buses will take her out of town if she needs.

(It makes her feel like her old self, having someone else do things for her, and anyway, it's a happy bonus that she won't leave online tracks from signing in to a website)

She's been moving for six weeks now, and it feels like a lifetime. Time is blurring around the edges, she forgets too easily what the day is and she wonders if this is the beginning of madness creeping in.

Days unfold into nights, or maybe they fold – she can't tell and doesn't care to know the difference.

 _This is hopeless,_ she decides one night. She's somewhere near a beach and she wants nothing more than to go home, or go to the beach and eat ice-cream.

Problem is, she also wants to survive. Going home would only make A furious that she wasn't dead, would only raise questions she couldn't answer.

The money Mona gave her is running out, but she ruffles the banknotes and separates each denomination, laying each note on the pages of her journal. Counting her money makes her nervous now, she's always convinced that she'll not have enough and then she really will be trapped. For all that she thinks she's trapped, she's okay as long as she has money for food and shelter.

Once again, she's lucky: it's enough for a cheap bus ticket and a motel. A bus leaves in fifteen minutes, and it's the last one for the week – maybe she can persuade someone to give her a discount.

Time to keep surviving.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

It's been another month, ten weeks total since she 'died' and went on the run.

She's learnt which of the inexpensive pre-packaged foods are cheapest and how to weave enough of a story that she can do some petty cash-in-hand tasks when she starts to run low on money. Stays active enough that she doesn't think people recognize her, moves through the shadows with a dull grey hood drawn over her head.

(She doesn't like black anymore, it's way too anonymous and anyway, she can't afford the expense)

In every mirror she passes, every store-front window and reflective surface, she sees herself and doesn't recognize the girl with ashy hair that's halfway blonde and halfway black – the colour is washing out, fading, taking deep black colour to a dulled sort of dark. In the end she buys a costume wig, says it's for a theatre role. It's heavy on her head, itches and the fit isn't as good as it could be but it's the best she can do.

It means another week of toast and peanut butter in a motel room, but that's okay.

0o0o0o0

Her nomadic habit begins to have its drawbacks: every motel room looks just the same, one bed sloppily made with cheap linens, a functional set of furniture and a few kitchen appliances. Déjà vu kicks in, and she spends – loses – days convinced that she's been in this room, this motel before. It doesn't matter that she keeps with her a map of the United States, and maps of every state and marks in circles the cities in which she stays, the paranoia and familiarity creep into her bones.

(these are the times where she curls up in the most advantageous corner she can find, body ready to leap up and fight if she has to)

She learns how to wash clothes in the shower and bathroom sink, using the free soaps provided, and hangs them on the communal clothesline to dry when it's sunny. If the weather is bad, she cracks windows open and hangs the clothes in the bathroom.

So much for looking decent: her clothes end up crumpled and creased because of wringing them out, and they don't feel soft. A shirt gets snagged on her fingernail, so she rips out the hem and slashes it an inch shorter, calls it DIY trendy. It's okay though, it saves the money of laundromats. Saves her having to engage with others and risk saying the wrong thing.

It's cheap and drab, and she misses dearly being able to have things properly laundered, the way clothes feel when they're fresh from the laundry and fully intact.

There are more advantages than disadvantages though so she grits her teeth and gets along with it.

0o0o0o0

She develops a system: when she gets to a new town she makes a beeline for the local bureau and finds out free things to do. Then she finds a café, someone new to buy her lunch and makes her way to the nearest motel.

Each of the next three days is allocated to museum and art gallery and library, staring at exhibits she doesn't care to learn about and books she doesn't want to read. Sometimes she picks up a thick fiction and camps out in the back of the library until closing time, tries desperately not to miss closing.

One evening she discovers a little hidden room in the library, hunkered over some dead author's doorstop of a novel, and so she takes her book there, buys vending machine snacks to tide her over.

At some point she falls asleep, knees drawn up to her chest and head drooping with the effort of keeping awake over such a wordy book. No-one comes to shake her awake during the night,

(because there's no-one to care, she remembers when she awakes the next morning with stiff knees that crack when she stretches out her legs and a sore neck from being hunched over the book)

and it occurs to her that she's just found a free new place to sleep.

After the three days she roams aimlessly, hopping on and off buses to see where they will take her. There are free concerts, city-sponsored events in the parks and it's always a case of food in exchange for a small cost, so small in fact that she can hand over a palmful of coins and the people running the tables will smile and ask what drink she wants, wish her a pleasant day.

It breaks up the monotony of hunting through her loose change for another vending-machine meal, and the first time she gets a burger she ignores the fact that it's generic and made to cater to a dozen other people, devours it because it's hot and substantial and has at least some taste to it.

Behind her face-masking sunglasses, she's just another girl with an awkward dye-job taking in the last of the good weather.

0o0o0o0

City-hopping takes a lot of time, she realizes. Whenever she'd thought about running off, travelling cross-country she'd never quite taken into account how much time would be spend on travel. Taking planes as needed, or sitting in the backseat while her parents alternated driving never taught her just how much time she'd need to allocate to going from one place to the next. She never knew just how long you might have to wait for the next bus if you missed one, never really gave much thought to how long a train might take travelling between states.

It works out though because she brings her thrift-store novels to the depots and stations, reads and writes, tries her hand at sketching.

It's a way to kill time.

0o0o0o0

Movies and theatre.

They're two things she has overlooked a bit until now, but she has a better grasp on how to travel and knows the best ways to bluff her way around. She learns that if a theatre isn't sold out, then she can get a discounted ticket – only if she has the money – and that sometimes people hang out in the lobby alone hoping to find company for the evening's entertainment. Even better, she learns that if she plays dumb she can convince someone she's actually smart and then they're paying her way in because they're happy to have the company.

Sometimes she works the pre-show lobby as if she's the one on stage, pretends to have lost her wallet or ticket or money and someone will take pity on her, buy her a new ticket.

They never see her again, or the money, but she's learnt the art of survival.

On other times, she works things so well that she gets invited to dinner, lunch or offered a place to stay.

She flashes her Vivian Darkbloom smile and agrees readily.

(free food, free comfortable place to stay, what's not to like?)

She's gone before dawn, stealing a sandwich and bottle of water for the road and leaving the trail of her perfume as proof that she was ever there.

0o0o0o0

So she knows how to kill a week, knows how to get someone to buy her food and entertainment.

Knows how to play to someone's ego, how to make intelligent remarks on a play she's seen and make her companion feel like they're the only person on her radar.

Not bad for a sheltered girl, and her teeth glow with the soft candlelight as she smiles prettily.

0o0o0o0

Thanksgiving is rapidly approaching and for the better part of a day she debates with herself about going home for a sneak visit. If she's very careful, maybe she can trick A and fly so low under the radar that only her parents and brother will see her, then slip out with fresh clothes and extra money.

It's getting colder, she can see her breath when she exhales and coffees don't stay hot for as long as they could.

In the end, she decides against it. Uses the money on a thrift-store winter coat and gloves, picks up a few hours house-cleaning to top up her stash. It means a couple of nights sleeping in the library's hidden room, but at least she'll be warm. Her hands shake from the cold and when she flirts her way into a meal she's always conscious to pick something hot.

(doesn't know when the next one will be, after all)

She struggles to figure out what she's going to do for Thanksgiving, there's a shelter a couple of streets over which is hosting a hot lunch. Turkey and vegetables, all the trimmings. It's mainly a matter of pride: she's Alison DiLaurentis.

Nostalgia wins out though because technically right now she isn't Alison, she's Vivian and it doesn't matter who she is because either way she wants a Thanksgiving dinner. If she can't be with her family and friends then she can at least have a tableful of the same foods she's grown up knowing every Thanksgiving.

No, she decides, she isn't too prideful for a lunch hosted by a shelter.

0o0o0o0

The day works out fine. The food is excellent, and she takes a bit of everything.

She doesn't recall ever appreciating volunteers so much, considers doing some of her own volunteer work at some point. Changes her mind by the time she's walking out the door to return to her latest motel room, because as always she can't risk connecting with someone, can't risk getting too settled into the one place and being recognized.

(once she's recovered from the food she buys hair dye and touches up her colour)

0o0o0o0

It's the end of the year and doubly painful because Christmas is coming up, and she wonders what Rosewood is doing, wonders if they are doing the same trees and street decorations as last year or if they have something else. Already there are decorations out on the street, popping up overnight and it's barely December. Tinsel decorates the inside of store windows, drooping at the ends, and various displays of lights sparkle, printing themselves on her eyelids when she blinks.

She remembers Emily and how much she loved Christmas, how Aria would always try to make unique gifts and how Spencer would be competitive even with decorating and gift-wrapping. Remembers how her parents made conscious efforts to put aside all arguments, how she'd steal extra candy and blame Jason.

Snow swirls lightly around her as she crosses the street, roaming through a more residential area. Here, there are snowmen on every street, every window lit up with either coloured or white lights, and a few stray pine needles on the pavement. There is tinsel coiled around each lamppost, and if she listens closely she's sure she can hear a combination of bells and Christmas carols being played inside.

It's not unlike Rosewood.

By comparison, the motel is even sadder when she returns: one small fake tree is in the foyer, done up as if it was simply brought out of storage, decorations still on, and the reception desk has a couple of small decorations. She wonders how long the decorations will last; they look as if they have been stored and brought out every year for the last decade, and they don't look as though they will survive this festive season.

Her room is cold and dull, the only signs of life are her supply of food and the remade bed.

It's the price of survival.

0o0o0o0

She isn't stupid, never has been.

This is why she finds herself buying a very cheap and basic burner phone and making notecards for the supermarket's advertising board, offering her housecleaning services. It's extra holiday money, something more to do and she can't hang around here forever. Other people will have holiday stress, the added concerns of visiting relatives and Christmas cooking and dealing with gifts.

She doesn't have anything to stress about beyond surviving one day to the next. To do that though, she needs money, so she picks a number, calls it a special 'holiday rate'. _Call Holly_ , she prints on each of the cards, tacks them on various supermarket walls. _Cash only._

She'll risk staying here a bit longer for the season, then go.

It's a big city and she was right, there are people who just don't have enough hours in the day. Some people let her in and leave her there with a bucket of cleaning supplies, others work around her. It's the most human interaction she's had in weeks, and watching other happy families go about their lives stings worse than ever.

She cleans silently, scrubs mirrors and vacuums floors until her ears ring.

(doesn't have a manicure to wreck, doesn't have an iPod to drown out the noise)

It becomes a habit to assess each house, eyeing the various jewellery on casual display. It'd be so easy to pocket a necklace from this house, diamond earrings from that one and pawn them a few cities later. The phone is going in the train stations' trash anyway, she'll never see these people again, it was their fault for not checking references…

No. It's too risky, she can't chance the thefts being reported. Even if her alias has another persona, she doesn't want to worry about being chased for theft as well as everything else.

Instead, she continues polishing furniture until she's sure she's about high from the fumes and collects her money. Some of the women – housewives, she guesses – give her small parcels of food, things that won't go off too quickly. Dinner, with the help of the microwave that she's always sure is about to blow up, works out best on the days she's spent cleaning.

The stash in her backpack grows steadily and she spends some time counting it all out, folding the notes discreetly into a couple of small boxes and tins in a secret pocket.

0o0o0o0

So she spends her first Christmas as a dead girl cleaning houses and eating microwaved handouts in a ratty motel. She can't go home for fear of being stalked, and she's going to be picking up and moving on soon. At least she has a decent stash of money with her, at least she's learning that she can rely upon herself.

It's survival.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

She's three months dead when there's a new fear.

(twelve weeks, three months, she doesn't care to count how many days or hours it's been)

It's the New Year, people have been drunkenly ringing in the hour and flipping calendars. Normally she'd join in, be at the centre of the party with a flock of people around her – boys flirting and girls envying, sneaking drinks when adults look away. This time she can't take the risk, _in vino veritas_ , she remembers someone saying once, and so she stays soberly quiet in a café with a book. Here, she is a bookworm.

She reads a new book on a new day of a new year and weaves a tale about the symbolism in her journal.

Anyway, the café is still open at 3am, the trendy thirty-something behind the bar accommodating sober-up coffees and a place to sit out of the cold. Her vantage point is the best in the building, the better to scope out who is approaching.

"Ali!" rings out from the door, and she stiffens. It's like a blow to the chest,

(or the back of the head, she remembers, but she's too entranced to do anything. this is like watching a horror movie unfold, watching some bad thing happen to your favourite character and – she's tempted to get up and run, but that would give it away.)

The girl stumbles in, hair wild and makeup smudgy from drinking and dancing. She's a bit of a prep, a bit of a Spencer-type, and Ali watches stiffly. It feels like everyone can see through her heavy eyeliner to the blue eyes underneath, like the line of her wig is completely obvious, like everyone can see through the black fiber to the blonde underneath. Her face feels like it is bright red, spotlit somehow and every inch of her wants to get up and run.

Instead, Prep Girl makes her way over to a punk girl, one with blue hair and an eyebrow ring. She forces herself to sit civilly for another thirteen minutes, counting each one off on her cheap watch. Her toes wiggle in her boots, the only way she can fidget without it being seen, and she yawns twice in the process.

Eventually it's time to leave, so she drops a twenty under the coffee cup and winds her way through the tables. Learns that Blue Hair is actually called _Ellie_ , short for Eleanor, and tries not to let her relief show. Sticks her hands in her coat pockets to hide the shaking.

She walks out of the café and down the street as though everything is perfectly normal, but she can't resist the temptation to run to the motel. The guy on the desk raises his eyebrows – the most he'd ever come to showing concern – and she brushes it off with a pretence that she's been drinking. She stumbles a bit on the way to the stairs, so it's convincing enough. He doesn't need to know it's from her latest adrenaline rush.

That night, she packs up and leaves with the dawn.

0o0o0o0

Another day, another city, another café. She watches the sun rise on a snow-dusted city, trampled celebratory ornaments being kicked aside as people shuffle through the city on missions to cure hangovers and catch up with others.

This is the problem, she decides: She has been Vivian Darkbloom too long. It's made her complacent.

It's time for an update, a change in identity – oh, but the problem is she doesn't know anyone. Has no contacts here who will forge her a new name, no-one who can change her face. Unseen, under the table, her nails dig into her knees through the thin fabric of her jeans. She feels useless, can't reconcile how long she's survived if she doesn't know something as basic as getting a fake ID.

In the motel room, she scowls at her reflection in the bathroom. The dark wig is hanging up to dry, it's the one thing she really takes care of because she still needs it, can't afford hair dye all the time.

"Call yourself a survivor," she mutters, and turns away.

Two nights pass like this, she goes hungry because that incident with punk Ellie has spooked her thoroughly, she doesn't dare venture out for food. It doesn't matter that she has placed miles between them and she's in a different damned _state_ , because what if punk Ellie was an A-trap?

Not for the first time, she has this thought: she is in way over her head.

0o0o0o0

She gets lucky though.

She dresses for a night of clubbing and works her way through the crowds. Makes oblique references to fake ID's that no-one understands, though half the crowd is drunk anyway. It's a college town with students who have an excuse to party, still being on semester break.

(closest she might get to college now)

Her strategy is a good one: picks people to buy her drinks, admires their ID and hope they take the bait.

At some point she's in the bathroom, the stall sealing her off from everyone else, and two girls stumble in. They're talking in the slightly garbled tones of someone who is partially drunk, and trying to be sober. They are trying to be secretive about their conversation, and she swings her feet off the floor.

 _Fake ID_ piques her interest, and she smudges the address onto the inside of her arm with eyeliner.

0o0o0o0

The address turns out to be an office-type place, all apartment building of offices and there's a tiny hidden room. She's prepared for it to be a trap – always is – so when the guy calls her Holly and takes note of her new fake details, she counts it as another stroke of luck. He doesn't ask why she needs it, so she guesses he's seen it all before: pretty rich girl wants to defy her parents and the law.

Guesses he doesn't care enough to stop her.

(only why should he, he's the one getting paid, he's got just as much to lose as his clients)

A day later she's Claire, Claire Sharpe and she swings her bag on the crook of her arm. Claire is nineteen and born in December and hails from New York. It takes a bit more work to look nineteen every day

(not just the nineteen of a girl getting into a club where the bouncers turn a blind eye)

and she's resourceful as ever. Makes it work with heavy eyeliner and lashes tinted black, lips stained red and the odd twisted hairdo. Memorizes her new details, buries Vivian deep in her bag. Can't risk sentiment, but doesn't want to get rid of her just yet.

Whatever.

It's survival.

0o0o0o0

She stumbles through her cities, always marks them as hers in some small way. They're all the cities that took her in and kept her fairly safe. She leaves lipstick marks and perfume trailing behind her, people wondering after the girl who slips away.

They're her cities.

(so was rosewood, once)

0o0o0o0

It took fourteen weeks, but she is a ghost now.

No, no – not in that she's dead,

(though the world thinks she is)

but the kind where she no longer stands out from the crowd. She no longer has the ability to stand tall and challenge someone twice her age with her carefully-designed posse at her heels. People don't stop and stare anymore, they don't stop to admire her shoes or carry her books. There is no fear, no manipulation left. There's no need for her to steal secrets, because she takes them with her when she leaves their owners behind.

Her source of power is gone.

0o0o0o0

She trails around, lost.

Her food supply is dwindling and she's used her new ID to clean a house, babysit a few hours in the afternoons. It's not a good idea, she knows, because there's always the chance that someone will look too closely. She has money with her, hidden in an old ChapStick tube and in at least four different pockets of her bag, plus the lining of her coat, but she doesn't know where she is or what she's doing.

Her usual routine has become just that – routine – and she can't afford to risk people. It's too risky, forming attachments and meeting people. She doesn't like to be alone all the time, it's why she made her posse, but now she needs to be alone.

Routine is how they catch you out, after all.

0o0o0o0

So she slows her running.

She manages to amass enough money babysitting or cleaning, and sometimes _supplementing_ the money when no-one is paying attention. It isn't her fault if everyone leaves their spare cash in the same place – they're practically inviting someone to take it, and she needs it.

Every little addition she takes builds up, until the designated tin can't close any further. She gets inventive, hollows out lipstick tubes and one rainy day making a hollow book. It's enough for her to remain in a place for two weeks if she's careful with what foods she buys.

(she once vowed to never stoop to petty crime, but this is desperate. anyway, she can't let herself see it as stealing, because she does need the money, and she promises herself it's not like she's spending it on shoes and bag)

In the usual grotty superette, she adds a bottle of vitamin supplements. They take a while to work and she's wondering if she wasted her money, but overall she does feel a bit healthier, does feel a bit better for the steady supply of vitamins in her bloodstream. They don't exactly balance out her eating habits, but they do help.

Anyway, the bottle is sturdy plastic. It makes for another place to store cash.

0o0o0o0

There's a boy.

His name is Jeremy, and he's kind and sweet. He is all the things she isn't, especially honest. She pretends to be Clara – Claire was a good name, sometimes she can change it slightly, call it a clerical error or nickname – and he tangles his fingers through hers in the dark of a theatre.

(she's a drama major, you see, and loves theatre)

In the dark she tilts her face away from his, lets her stinging eyes spill over a bit and tells him she found the play so moving. He makes her want to be good, to be the honest girl he thinks she is, but honesty hasn't got her far up until now. If he knew about _her,_ about Alison, he'd be the one running and she wouldn't blame him.

She'd let him go, honestly.

They drive back to the hotel she's pretending to stay at and he watches her walk in, she watches him drive away and then leaves for the motel.

It goes like this for two weeks and she thinks on her fourth month of being dead. Jeremy kind of makes her feel alive, but he's the sort who would want to do dorky anniversaries like first date or first met and she can't afford it on any level. Instead, she tells him one lunchtime that there's a family emergency, she has to fly back home right away and her flight is tonight.

He writes down his information and she promises to call or write. Ten minutes later she's leaving the restaurant and by the end of the night his information is flushed down the toilet.

(he wouldn't have liked the real her anyway, she reminds herself, and swallows down the regret)

Another one bites the dust.

0o0o0o0

The ghost girl is back.

She drifts to another bus, another city that she doesn't know.

It turns out that she does know this city, because she's been here before. Not geographically; she's meticulous about recording every place she steps foot in, but figuratively. The buildings look the same, the same libraries and museums and galleries. She'd never really stopped to noticed this before, but all the cities are blurred.

(see one city, you've seen them all)

She doesn't remember one from another, doesn't remember where she got the green bracelet wrapped around her wrist or the blue earrings in her ears.

Well, maybe it doesn't matter. She's alive, isn't she?

0o0o0o0

The thing about crowds is that they envelop you, draw you in and tangle you into a clump of people who wouldn't know you from any other person. She makes a habit of pacing streets with long crowds of people, and _this_ makes her feel alive.

She is here.

She wants to shout at people, because she's hiding in plain sight. _Don't you see,_ she'd yell, _I'm here, I'm me. I'm real._ Wants to rip off the wig and let people see her there, alive as ever because even death wasn't enough to keep her down, to fade the black dye from her hair and watch shock and awe play out in a crowd of people, better than any story on stage.

Still, she is a ghost here, and she doesn't do that because people wouldn't know her anyway.

(one day she selected a milk carton, it had her own face on it and she stared at it in front of the mirror trying to find similarities between the girl and her own)

People are still searching for her then.

Does that make her real?

0o0o0o0

She resists all temptation to return to herself, and continues playing Claire. The trifecta of celebratory holidays has passed; that makes it easier to keep going, keep playing dead.

(every time she passes a department store she buys her favourite red lipstick. it's the one thing she always keeps money for, because when she wears it, it means she can't be a ghost)


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: Time jump of three months here. It's now mid-March, six months on.  
Thank you all **_**so**_ **much for the reviews, and I'm very sorry if I don't reply.**

She startles awake in some new motel, still exhausted.

Her memory fails to give her the story of what happened the night before, the journal lying open before her. Names sprawl across the page, and she panics. They're people and cities and books, they're towns and streets and everywhere she's been.

The first thing that occurs to her is that A has finally caught her, finally caught up to her and she isn't even sure if what she's feeling is fear because she's so far from Rosewood that A may as well be a ghost, a relic of a nightmare. Maybe its relief, relief that she will _finally_ get to go home and answer to all the questions, start getting her life back.

Two pages back, the top of the page reads that she needs allies, and it's now that she starts remembering, fragments of the last night trickling through. More memories are triggered when she pours a glass of water, the glass clattering against the kitchen worktop.

Now she gets it – she went out for some holiday, found a college bar that ignored students' ages in favour of making profit. Went out and bought rounds of drinks, wove tales of traveling nomadically

(made it sound like a fun trip rather than a for-her-life one)

and coaxed people to set her up with contacts. There are what looks like dozens of names jammed onto the pages, it's more people than she's spoken to in weeks and she feels overwhelmed. Crammed into the thin lines are the details of who is who: someone who has a cousin who has a friend who needs a roommate, or a girl whose sister's boyfriend's aunt wants a temporary live-in cleaner. There are more relatives and friends on these pages, than there are in her entire life right now. These people all had different tales, but the one thing they all had in common was how easily they helped her when prodded. There are phone numbers and street addresses, all in different cities. It's enough to keep her alive – hopefully – for the next two years, if not longer.

She's sure that not every person is waiting to spring a trap, so she rips out the pages, finds a clean page and neatens up the notes.

0o0o0o0

The problem doesn't become clear until she goes to book more time in her motel room. It's only been three days, she's comfortable with another three before she begins to feel too conspicuous.

Paying in cash has been the method since day one, and she unfurls bank notes from her bag before going to reception. Instead, her fingers hit bare space when she reaches into the pockets of the bag – the money she should be finding isn't there.

It's like downloading and watching a movie, the way the memory makes itself known. She watches herself as she winds her way through a packed bar, promises a round of drinks on her. Watches as she pulls tens and twenties from her bag, scatters coins over the bar to pay for snacks.

(in her conscious mind, the one that's watching, she wants to reach out and scoop up all the money, wants to smack herself and make her leave the bar. instead she's watching, helpless as the money is gone before it hits the counter)

Frantic now, she scrabbles through the rest of the room. There's nothing in the pocket of her spare jeans, a ten-dollar in the jacket, and that's all she comes up with after an hour. She's not in the habit of hiding money in her rooms – it's a way to protect herself against both theft and the possibility of leaving something behind if she has to leave in a hurry. All the money she has stays with her, in pockets and old lip balm tubes, rolled up and hidden so well sometimes even she forgets where it is.

Only it's gone, the security it promised is gone.

Two nights are all she's got left in the room, it's all she was able to pay for upfront, and the idea of leaving for the late-autumn chill takes root in her mind, doesn't let her go.

Resignedly furious now, she barricades herself in the room. Flips the key in the doorknob , draws all the curtains shut. Four walls are all she needs and right now she doesn't even have that, can't rely on the partial warmth of the motel to stay alive.

For almost four hours, she doesn't move.

On the fifth hour she gets bored, hungry and almost falls asleep. The slush fund she had been saving is gone, wrecked in one night and for what? All it has got her is a list of names – people she doesn't know, in places she can't afford to go to. She hasn't got a credit card or checkbook that will take a day or two to bounce – she will not stoop further than what she already has.

Out of the motel, the wind is bitingly chilly and _this is what there is to look forward to_ , she tells herself.

Might as well get used to it now.

0o0o0o0

It takes a few days of pacing the streets, waiting until cafes are near closing time before she can beg a sandwich. Sometimes if she plays it right she can pretend she's buying and forgot her wallet – well, the people get where she's coming from if she's hungry, and they're sympathetic enough to give her something for nothing. Sometimes she trades off an hour or two of off-the-books dishwashing for a meal; the skin on her hands dries out quickly thanks to industrial-strength dishwash and scalding hot water.

Well, it gets her fed. The hot water reminds her she's alive, and if someone happens to slip a ten-dollar note into her palm as she leaves, what harm can it do?

It works.

0o0o0o0

 _The queen has fallen,_ she remembers with grim satisfaction. It's alright though, she's not completely ruined. Now, she knows how to survive. She knows how to play people even better than before, knows how to get money for imagined bus fares and cash to buy meals, knows how to save that money.

It's a problem though because it's going to take a while to resurrect the slush fund and she's been here two weeks now. Two weeks is too long, soon there will be that old feeling of there being a spotlight on her and the worry of being watched will resurface. She knows herself well enough by now to know that once that sensation comes in, she'll continue the fears until she steps off the bus in another city.

(of course she knows herself, there's no-one else around to do it)

Washing dishes is meditative, and she comes across the perfect solution one evening as she scrubs. Hitchhiking isn't illegal – there are of course concerns with it nowadays, and safety, but she's pretty sure it would be safer than having death threats lipstick-scrawled over her mirror. Anyway, if she plays her cards right she'll be able to manipulate, be able to pick up on fears and insecurities and get just what she wants.

(no – needs. she doesn't _want_ to go hitchhiking across states just to regain a sense of safety, but it's all the same at this point)

So she bundles up her bag and disappears from the motel, still owing a small portion of her last bill. It doesn't matter in the big picture, she promises herself. The motel will still be used, still drag on day-to-day. They'll still have customers who pay, still charge fees.

She pushes back the thought about how that will affect people, but it's there.

0o0o0o0

The thing with the money is that it feels like sabotage. For months she's been worried that someone was shadowing her, worried that there's someone waiting to trap her and drag her back to Rosewood.

For her to do something so unusual like that night at the pub… well, it worries her more than usual. She spends a lot of time worrying, but this is bigger.

What if A has been keeping tabs on her all along?

In the next city, at the next library, she Googles herself.

There are pictures of her, the good pictures. She looks happy and healthy, but she also looks blonder than she remembers being – she doesn't _quite_ recognize herself.

People began fearing for her safety months ago, read the headlines. She checks every date obsessively, ruminates over some incident or another to match up a date with a memory of something. They began to think the search would turn up negative, she learns, still some months ago.

The latest news is that she'll be presumed dead soon. She's a minor and she's gone missing, maybe a runaway and maybe not. Her mother hasn't come forth about burying her, it seems, and nor has she come forth about watching her be hit over the head with a rock.

In fact, her mother hasn't come forth about a lot of things, and so she writes a list of questions in the back of her journal – questions to ask, questions to remember because she needs to know. She needs to know what she did that was so bad that she's going through all of this.

All it boils down to is her friends and family are releasing generic-sounding statements imploring her to return, imploring anyone with knowledge to come forth and it sounds like it's been recycled from every other missing person search. There's a reward out and she wonders why Mona hasn't come forth, spilled details that might let her come back. Might get Mona the glory she seemed to want.

The librarian jostles her from her thoughts, jabbing at where a wristwatch would be and making annoyed faces. It seems overly dramatic right now, so she wipes her computer history and leaves silently.

Silent as a ghost, even – you'd only know she was there by looking at security footage.

0o0o0o0

It is three weeks on from March, three weeks since she burnt all her money on making friends, but at least now she has a steady supply of housekeeping tasks to do. It's a big house with one resident who needs help keeping things clear – some architecture tours thing. She doesn't know the exact details, nor does she care to.

The city is a new one, the house is on the outskirts of town and big enough to warrant staff living there instead of commuting. As arrangements go, it's pretty close to perfect, and she is soon trusted enough to go out and do the shopping, bringing back groceries.

After the second shopping trip, her employer doesn't ask for the change back.

It makes the arrangement perfect, because she soon masters the art of picking out cheaper groceries and pocketing the extra cash. She'd feel bad about it, but a bleeding heart isn't going to help her survive.

It goes like this, then. Every morning she's up early, completing a list of tasks pinned to the fridge. It varies from day-to-day, and there's always money on the table so she can go and buy groceries, cleaning supplies, lunches. She learns her employer is allergic to tomatoes and dislikes strawberries; learns which sounds are a person walking down the hall and which are just noises of a settling house. She learns how to hide when another troop of tourists comes through the house, disappears into behind-couches and where the best part of the garden is to camouflage her presence.

At night they eat separately and at first she's offended – is she not suitable dinner company?

(it's been so long since she lived in a staffed house that it takes a week to remember, not everyone likes to eat with their staff as though they are friends)

Anyway. She gets it, and as long as she's being paid _and_ fed, the solitary dinners aren't so bad. She's used to it by now, and the food is certainly better than whatever she used to scrounge when living out of her bag in a motel.

She could get used to this, could happily stay here for the next few months tending to the house and having proper meals, could get used to having a steady stream of income plus whatever change she keeps from cash purchases.

If this is being dead, maybe it's not so bad.

0o0o0o0

After two weeks the assignment ends. She calls it an assignment because it makes her feel better about being sketchy and showing up on the doorstep without a resume. It was only a temporary assignment, she knows this but when she packs up her bags and takes the final cash envelope (thicker than usual, evidently this is what people mean when they talk about a severance pay) she can't help feeling that she'll miss the place.

The drive to the bus station is silent, and she hurries in, keen not to let anyone see her hang around until she decides what bus to get. Eventually she decides on the first one going, hands over a few notes and takes a seat.

As she leaves the city, it kind of feels like a mistake.


	5. Chapter 5

**AN: If you notice any flaws in the timeline, please let me know? This chapter is… late March 2011, if I've got it right.**

 **Chapter 5**

She picks a random day in April and spends it cutting her hair. By now the freshness of the colour is almost totally faded out, black hair going grey from countless washes and her blonde hair is growing back in. One part of her is pleased to see how seamless it is, how good her natural colour looks underneath, but the other part misses the blonde.

Even so she shears off a good two inches' of black grow-out with nail scissors and hopes it's not uneven.

The days are growing longer now, getting just a bit warmer, and there's definitely more time in the day to get things done. It's still the same routine of motels and cafes for day-watching, of movies when she feels the need to really hide out, and she toys with the idea of setting up some kind of online dating profile, help her cover ground every time she reaches a new city by finding someone to meet up with to buy her dinner or lunch.

(decides promptly against it, because there's too much risk in posting a photo online. she watches enough crime shows on motel TV to know that a photo can be analysed to within an inch of its life and then some)

Instead, she returns to her old habits of haunting movie theatres, this time going in for the night showings. It means she might have to walk back in the dark, but that's okay. There's pepper spray in her bag, and she skimmed just a few dollars off the fund in the event that someone's going to demand money.

For the one night, she goes to the theatre with a couple of girls she meets and leaves off the dark wig. It's a gamble to think that no-one is going to recognize her, but the truth is that under all the changes of the past six months, they probably aren't.

She doesn't recognize herself in the mirror when she's linking a necklace around her neck, but she'd wager they don't either, and the realization is this: not many people care about her. These girls give no indication of recognizing her, and it occurs to her that she might just be a headline to them; a quick mention of a still-missing, maybe-dead teen girl.

They'd have no reason to believe that they're hanging out with a dead girl, and so they whisper through the movie and she takes it in like it's her first movie experience.

0o0o0o0

It's been seven months now and she buys a new journal for the beginning of summer. Normally, the new journal is a tradition set aside for the beginning of a new school year, but nothing about the situation is normal, and anyway, the one she has is falling apart, too full of notes and poems. The journal is a bit expensive and she tries not to cringe at the price.

Later, it occurs to her that she spent that much and more on a great notebook in her old life.

The only difference is that she no longer has the support of her parents' bank accounts.

0o0o0o0

The travel continues and she tries to be grateful, fully aware that this is kind of the trip of a lifetime for some.

At any rate, it's the trip of _her_ lifetime.

Every city she encounters is a reminder that she's still alive, still made it to another day.

The travel all takes its toll by stealing the sheen of her hair and the softness of her skin, so she repays it by reading more thrift-store bought books and making herself smart. If her looks are going to fade, then she'll just have to keep her brain sharp, make it so good that others have trouble keeping up.

Except Spencer, of course, she doesn't mind if Spencer is able to keep up. If she allowed that to happen, then at least her friends would know everything Spencer knew.

The rest of the world – well, it's better that they stay a few paces behind.

0o0o0o0

There's a new source of entertainment.

It's a college city, the kind where there's one big-name college plus at least one smaller school nearby. If she plays it right and gets a motel near the schools, she can sneak into the classes and take notes on random topics.

This is how she learns art and history, pretends to learn complicated maths and even more complicated science, laws and topics she never knew existed. She looks the part, in jeans and a t-shirt, with her little backpack on one shoulder. At the end of the class she sneaks out like a ghost, debates finding another one to attend but doesn't.

(there's always a risk of being recognized and raising questions with it)

And on the fourth day of doing this, she looks at the computer monitor indicating what classes are coming up in the hall. There's a class finishing at seven, and then the place will be deserted. She's familiar enough with the place to know that the library is open until late. Even more familiar with the fact that there are no cleaners at that time of night.

The place won't be locked until about midnight, so she gets up her nerve to linger and then doubles back after the class finishes, curls into a little alcove and tries to sleep.

This is the worst of the lot.

Her shoulders stiffen and her back gets a crick in it, so she sets her watch for a 5am wakeup and closes her eyes.

(by now she's found that even closing her eyes will trick herself into sleep)

It's by no means a _good_ night's sleep, but it's sheltered and warm enough, so she swaps out her t-shirt and finishes getting changed in her makeshift room.

Luxury, this is not.

She leaves the room with minutes to spare; it seems that people here do maintenance early, and she doesn't have the time to hang around and be discovered.

It seems that she still gets what she wants, so when she wants to be gone, she's gone.

If she hikes over to the other side of campus, she might be able to find another lecture for the morning and someone to buy breakfast, then it's time to leave the city entirely. Her records now include class notes that mean nothing to anyone who isn't legitimately in the class, but that doesn't matter much. It's something more to read if she gets bored.

0o0o0o0

By the end of the month, she cracks and searches up her friends online; she tells herself it's just out of curiosity for summer plans, but she gets sucked back into the news. Emily is first, and her profile is a bit bare, as it always was. Spencer is the same, but there's more to her feed; homework and extracurricular questions, problems with some new activity she's setting up. Aria is in Iceland, and she's never felt quite so out of the loop when she sees this.

Hanna's is the most changed, full of updates and photos of her with Mona. It's all very cool-girl, and she feels like she's looking at Ali 2.0.

In a way, she supposes, she is. Hanna will do well at being popular, she thinks, all sweet and light and genuinely meaning it. That girl doesn't have an agenda, but she suspects Mona will bring the snark and deviousness. Certainly there's the intelligence for it.

They're like opposite twins, one light and one dark. Good and bad.

She exits the browser, eyes bleary with tears that she won't allow herself to cry because if she does then it slows her down. Physical activity is the best release for this, so she pulls on sneakers and goes for a run.

(somewhere along the way, physical fitness became another tool in her arsenal of survival weapons, not a luxury, but she takes comfort in building up strength and speed just a little bit more)

By the time she's done two laps, her leg is protesting and it's just another thing to be frustrated about.

Her disappearance hasn't garnered as much interest over the last months as she had thought it would. People have been trying to find her still, but the urgency behind it is waning, she can tell this from how the reports have toned down. There used to be a few reports per week, people chasing down missing ends or new ideas that came up.

Mona still hasn't come forth, she knows this much, and she concedes that Mona no longer knows what state she is in. All Mona knows is that she helped fake a death, and that Ali is gone.

She drums her fingers absently, thinking of all the ways she could get a message to her friends. The only problem is that she doesn't trust anything, can't create an email account for fear of it being hacked. Not using a phone in so long means that she no longer remembers numbers, and writing on paper is out because of all the ways that could go bad. Just thinking about it makes her stomach turn and her shoulders tense up, so she puts it out of her mind.

There's nothing to be done for it, then, but to keep tabs on the girls from afar.

0o0o0o0

In the end, she picks one girl per city. Scrutinizes social media and the news.

This is how she learns that in her absence, Emily is throwing herself into swim. She learns Spencer is chasing after guys that should be off-limits, and that Hanna is in fact the kinder, sweeter model of herself, and that Aria's apparently thriving in Iceland.

She learns of the distance between them now their leader is no longer there, binding them together. It goes beyond the obvious, of one of them being in another country altogether. She watches them drift, thinks they'd never stand a chance against A if A ever resurfaced.

They have plans for the summer, she learns, and it's all about the same. Spencer is continuing with academic projects, Emily is swimming, Hanna is chasing down popularity and Aria is drifting through an Icelandic way of life.

Her absence is the only difference.

Other than that, it's life as usual in Rosewood.

0o0o0o0

Summer arrives hot and sticky in New York, but she hasn't been here in months. No-one in their right mind would come here when it's so hot – at least that's her logic, so she slips on sunglasses that mask her face and eyes securely and disappears into the crowd.

Theatres with their air-con are a blessing right now, so she sees as many movies as she can talk her way into, and calls herself a film major.

(she's sixteen pretending to be nineteen still and this time she's grateful to be aging)

Anyway. It keeps her alive, keeps her from being detected too thoroughly. She picks the older arthouses over the big cinema complexes – less likely to have security footage – and spends her days there, pays a cover charge for the day and brings her own lunch crammed into a smaller bag.

After so many months in smaller towns and cities, New York is overwhelming to her. The smell of gasoline hangs heavy in the air, not quite choking her, and on the hottest days she thinks she can see it shimmer in the air. There's too many people around, always hustling through the streets as if on fast-forward and the sun is too bright after so many hours spent in the dark.

In the end she tries to keep her outdoors exposure to a minimum, visiting the theatre in the earliest hours of the morning and leaving when the employees start looking pointedly at the doors.

Still, she prides herself on being clever and learns how to hide out in the bathroom until she's certain no alarms will go off and no-one will be there to catch her out, then sneaks off to sleep in the comfiest chair she can find.

0o0o0o0

The days meld together into sultry heat and cold movie screenings, and she remembers the Fitzgerald Theatre, remembers the vastness of that theatre compared to the small charm of these ones.

She returns there, uses what Ezra had taught her to sneak in – luckily, it's closed at this time of night – and finds her way to the concession.

There's candy there, not at all what she'd pick for any kind of meal but she's hungry and thirsty. The stage is vast, she drags up lines from plays she vaguely remembers reading and performs them on the stage, over-delivering the lines and throwing her body into her performance. Recites poetry that she read, lines that stand out to her or reads from her journal just to hear herself speak.

(if she does this, she can pretend she's another human voice to listen to, pretends she has company, and adds to the illusion by giving herself an accent)

She twirls, pirouetting the way she learned in ballet classes, and curtsies to an invisible audience, flinging her arms out to accept applause.

Silence is the stern reply, and she sinks back to sit down, defeated.

Finds herself a place to sleep – there's a comfortable prop chair that's more like a recliner – so she lies down, sets her alarm and drifts off.

0o0o0o0

The theatre has its deserted spots, so she hides out during the day in the dead spots that the security cameras don't pick up, waits until night and ventures out for something to eat. In a way, it's almost like being at home.

As always, she stays just long enough to get comfortable, then disappears into the summer.


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N: I've been** _ **super**_ **busy with Various Things In Life. If you're still reading, thank you. I located a PLL timeline, and I'm pulling a lot of info from there, but I'm still being a bit creative with it.**

 **Oh – and I really don't encourage the things Alison is doing to survive. Also, I'm not in any way trying to make light of hospitalization for mental illness. Possible TW for canon drug use.**

 **Chapter 6 – April 2011.**

She goes back to Rosewood for the third stealth visit, and this time she feels like there's a billboard announcing her presence in town, maybe a couple of spotlights on her shoulder. Spencer is loopy from the drugs for her wrist and Alison makes coffee while Spencer is too dazed to notice what's going on around her. She sits in warmth, sturdy building and shelter all around her, and drinks good coffee and one part of her luxuriates in it.

It feels a bit like being home, even as her skin crawls from being back. If A can see Spencer, then logic dictates she can see Alison. She goes to the kitchen and snags a few pieces of fruit, devours the apple hungrily and stashes other pieces in her bag, sits with Spencer. The drugs are strong, she knows this already. Chances are, this will all seem to be a dream for Spencer – she's not all that conscious now.

Alison talks to Spencer, dropping cryptic hints everywhere she can, looks around the room at the various knick-knacks and all she sees is money.

She has a substantial amount on her person now, sewed into the pocket of her jeans and tucked into her bra, wodged into a thick hairclip and under the lining of her right shoe, but it's never enough. There's always some travel to keep safe, keep from getting comfortable and recognized in an area.

A wallet is on the kitchen table, and with a glance back at Spencer, she ruffles through it.

She shouldn't do it. Spencer is her friend. She shouldn't be even _thinking_ of stealing from her friend.

They're not friends. Alison is dead. Has been for seven months and this is just a dream.

(you can't be present-tense friends with a dead girl)

The money in the wallet is a thick stack and there's so many twenties – she checks the license. Mr Hastings probably won't even notice if one happens to fall out.

She feels only a bit of guilt as she palms it, pocketing it deftly. Stares over at Spencer sleeping on the couch and tucks a blanket around her, puts the pill bottles over on the table. They'll be the first thing she sees when she wakes up, they'll keep her grip on this conversation tenuous. Tomorrow, she'll go to school and tell the others how she dreamed a conversation with Alison.

0o0o0o0

She wants to see the others, but there's no time. Jenna is pretending to not be blind, and Aria's mind is on Ezra. A blew up a building and two of her friends could have died.

It all bites at her mind, claws at her. _This is what's happened since you left, imagine if you had stayed._

 _Imagine what would happen if you had never left._

She tells herself that if she had stayed, stayed there as a living girl, she would have kept a tighter rein on Rosewood. She'd be there as a target for A and maybe she'd manipulate her way around, make it so her friends don't nearly die in burning buildings.

(she's never liked fire)

Anyway, she came into Rosewood as a ghost and left as a drug-induced hallucination. She takes it, because hallucinations are more real than ghosts. Ghosts are maybe real, and maybe not, and she doesn't want to be either because then she really is dead, and she isn't free to reveal herself as still living.

Hallucinations though, they tend to have a basis in reality. She was there, real and breathing, in the Hastings' living room, and now she's here, breath fogging up the window of a bus stop, still real and breathing.

The bus pulls up to the stop and she counts out the money that came from the Hastings wallets, just enough small denominations and a few coins that never get noticed. Buys a ticket to – she's not sure where, all that matters to her is that she gets far away and stops debating on if she prefers being ghost or hallucination. Her mind works strangely like that, sometimes. It was worse after she'd pulled Emily from the gas fumes in a barn, and she resigns herself to being hallucinated-girl.

 _What if I was still alive_ , she whispered to the air around her, once she was sure she was alone. It was risky, stupid, useless sentiment, but she did want to know the answer.

She pulls the hood over her head and leans against the window, lets herself wander.

0o0o0o0

It's two states and five cities away that she checks the news. _What is going on there_ is what she wanted to ask Spencer. What's going on when the girls are letting A rule them and blow up buildings and they're being stupid enough to go running towards danger at every turn.

She used to have a policy of "don't ask, you might get an answer" and she finds that Mona is A.

Garrett Reynolds is arrested for her murder.

 _One of these things is not like the other_ , she thinks, lying in a motel bed. She laughs hysterically, silently enough that her neighbour won't notice. _Mona,_ A.

She's brought back seven months in time when Mona timidly suggested she do what A wanted and disappear, and hears _why don't you do what I want you to do._ No wonder Mona became the new queen bee of school – she's grown so bold as to run around committing crimes in her free time while making over Hanna in her dead best friend's image.

Jealousy scorches through Alison's veins as she reads the newest coverage, paying a stupid amount from her funds to cover the internet costs. Here's Mona, beautiful and sleek and smart and elegant. Half of the photos have Hanna with her and Alison grits her teeth at the thought that Hanna is foil to Mona.

It used to be she was _Alison's_ foil.

She recognizes that Mona is _noted, notorious_ , _wild_ , even as she's no doubt being sedated in hospital. Mona has accomplished an immortality even beyond what Alison wanted – she is the tragic villain, the deceitful best friend, the loyal girl who's a little in love with her friendships – and yet she lives.

Alison is just a dead villain-bitch who wasn't loyal, didn't love deeply.

She envies Mona a little bit, that capacity for great love or great destruction. _Think of how much anyone could do with that._

She reads that it was all for Hanna, all because of Hanna. Tries to balance it, picture herself scorching the earth for Emily. It's hard to visualize, and she wonders if that's the problem – that she didn't love enough, and destroyed too much.

The girls don't visit her grave as much anymore, but they bring Mona cookies in hospital and half the girl's social media feeds are well-wishes.

(people are probably keeping their scorn for in private, she notes)

Shoving the computer mouse away, she cleans her computer history and leaves.

0o0o0o0

She journals furiously for a while, pulls out the sheets that she keeps updated with where she can go and who she can call if she needs a cheap place. One of the women, she remembers, is someone's aunt – needs a cleaner to live in for a few months – so she calls, and makes all the arrangements. Within a week she's all set up with her train tickets and stash of money hidden.

Maybe it's time to set up a decoy bank account, she considers. Keep the cash safe – oh, but she doesn't have any of the necessary paperwork. No fixed address for correspondence, and she hasn't even chanced setting up a generic email.

On the train, she sits silently and curses Mona.

It occurs to her that she _could_ go back. It's June now, and it's summer. If she goes there will be endless questions, but Mona is in hospital. The A-game is over and done.

0o0o0o0

She doesn't go back.

If she allows herself to think deeper, she realizes Mona is quite possibly playing a longer game, the kind where she sacrifices a few months out of her life and remains in hospital while still playing. When she thinks about it, Mona has already spent weeks running around in the dark and swapping between multiple phones, playing a two-faced game.

What's another few months in comparison?

Anyway, she's dead. Alison has time.

0o0o0o0

Summer falls for real now, and the days are hot, sticky. She buys a water bottle and freezes it every night before going to bed, takes ice water with her on her every travel, spends as much time as she can in air-conditioned rooms and buildings.

Every summer activity costs money, but she stumbles on drama one day when a receptionist walks out of the building. There's some issue with spending beach days in a cold room, apparently, but it sounds perfect to Alison. The director who interviews her does so with one eye and one ear trained on laptop, cellphone, and couldn't sound less interested.

Alison is well-versed in being whatever someone wants her to be, so she adds some extra pep to her voice and gives the woman her brightest smile. It feels like a grimace and she wonders if she sounds peppy to the point of psychotic, but she gets the job and starts right away.

Her birthday – seventeen today – is spent demonstrating that she can in fact type and understands that she isn't supposed to answer the phone with " _yeah?"_

She breaks two nails and studies the computer program she needs to use until the numbers all swim together, but this is a steady three-month job and maybe she'll be able to shift to a new motel by October. If she plays it right, she can use her fake driver's licence to get a bank account.

That night she buys a bottle of red nail polish, the candy-apple reddest she can find, and paints all twenty nails with it. Thinks _screw you_ to Mona, and reminds herself that even if she's dead, she's not confined to a small room with drugs and nurses keeping an eye on her.

(no-one is keeping an eye on her though, they don't know she's alive to do so)

0o0o0o0

On the fifth day of working, she finds that there is a weekend seminar running. She coaxes her boss to extract the cost from her wages at a staff discount and attends diligently, pulls her best college-girl impression. It's getting easier to do because now she's seventeen, supposed to be twenty, and her fake birthday has been and gone.

(she made her fake birthday three years and eleven days before her real one. different month but still easier to remember)

Every Saturday morning she gets up, dresses in boring tops and faded jeans, and sometimes smears on makeup. She's re-dyed her hair, and the fresh harsh black of it makes her look even more washed out. Without makeup, she's already half unrecognizable, and she hates being a dull girl with no fashion style.

(she hates the thought of really dying even more, and so she stays with it)

When it's her turn to speak, she introduces herself as "Claire, but call me Clara" no one flinches, and she counts off the looks of confusion she receives.

It works. By the end of the day most people are calling her "Claire-Clara" as if the two are interchangeable, and for all she knows, they are. She doesn't care either way, she didn't come here to make friends.

It's not long before she has a _routine_ set up, and it's both comforting and loathsome. Routine is how people can catch you out, it's how she used to be so predictable that she could come home from being out and find lipstick messages on her bedroom mirror.

Still, it feels nice being able to unwind slightly. Her shoulders don't feel quite so tense unless she's typing, a quick pitter-patter of the keys as her boss hovers in the doorway. Theoretically, it's so Alison can recite verbal reports as they process transactions or update on class attendance.

Less theoretically, it's so she can make sure there's no slacking off – Alison is nothing if not skilled at manipulation though, and she trims her nails as short as she can bear to make them, "makes it easier to type," she claims. For two long weeks she drags out lunches in the breakroom, with a stopwatch on to make sure she's back five minutes early, and she makes sure printouts are on the woman's desk before they're even needed.

On the third week the woman is satisfied that she has a _proper work ethic_ and leaves her to it. She's free to use her work email address to sign up for local news and bus passes, uses it to get discount notifications at the thrift shop down the road from the motel and fills a wallet with frequent customer cards.

It feels like the discount version of her old life. She learns to keep a budget and buys the cheapest plan she can find to keep the burner phone going, hires a bicycle with a short-term rate and learns to fix a tyre the first time it blows out.

Other people steer clear, looking briefly at her, registering the book in her hands before they veer away.

She's Claire, and forgetting who Alison ever was.


End file.
